Friday, 30 January 2009

Please be My Valentine!

My Dearest Darlings. As February begins Valentine’s Day decorations are ostentatiously daubed throughout your supermarkets and garage forecourts, restaurants promote romantically themed dinners for two, it is almost impossible to escape heart shaped reminders of the cultural duty to your loved ones. The lucky few who have managed to ensnare a like minded 'significant other' are encouraged to celebrate their mutually beneficial relationship. Under the golden hue of candle light, chocolates, flowers and oysters are declared essential for you to truly appreciate the joy and wonder of Saint Valentine’s Day.

Compulsory dinner dates, needless proposals of marriage, declarations of undying love are symptomatic of this mass delusion. The Valentine Day machine releases you from actually thinking about the true nature of love as this ubiquitous industry supplies thought free templates for those of you bereft of even the slightest romantic idea in your tiny raddled brains. Cards are red satin and over sized with depictions of bestial love intended to metaphorically echo your own vision of ‘loves young dream’. Infantile ‘cuddly’ toys are emblazoned with ‘hug me’ or ‘love me’ or ‘I love you’. Cutesy Cupid's arrows are jettisoned into your cultural landscape creating a nauseating parade of thoughtless sentimental platitudes dripping with clichéd insincerities. Thoughtless bunches of cheap red roses are quickly purchased and stuffed into the grasping hands of the needy. All creativity is ignored as the love sick and infatuated blindly and obediently follow St Valentines autocratic rule.

Even the few of you that are canny enough to see through this cynical marketing campaign internally writhe against the duty to court, terrified of the potential guilt of neglecting to organise an appropriate signifier that truly sums up the depth of your love. In another cultural celebration of heterosexuality the boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife union is esteemed yet further, romantically themed advertisements and campaigns are forced into your glazed eyes as you are forced to contemplate the quality of your relationships.

If you dare not to, you face the wrath and fury of your loved one, resentment and feelings of neglectful abandonment are bound to follow your forgetfulness. One or both of you have been programmed to believe that all your pathetically mindless peers will receive a stupendously romantic trinket or gesture that will outshine your own pathetic attempts at seduction. You desperately hurtle towards this mass delusion hoping to be involved with the orgiastic and celebratory love making marathon due to commence on February 14th.

How sweet to be seduced at a time when all of your culture demands it.

The happy couples that believe they are turning their back on such cultural brain washing are able to satisfactorily slumber in the comfort of society’s approval of their true sweet love. The once single can breathe a sigh of relief content in the knowledge that they are no longer in the barren wasteland of singledom. The single and alone are cast adrift, downgraded and shunned by a culture that sees no use for them at this time of romantic reverie.

Though what is Love? Love songs have addressed it, poems and sonnets have explored it and many continue to pursue it’s lofty ideals, though most have experienced it at some point the reality involves a mutual delusion that you have at last met your love match, your soul mate, your one and only. Though it seldom lasts and when it ends you’re once again transported to the mental wretchedness that is solo existence, made all the more painful by the constant promotion of conjugal bliss.

Of course the reality is less rose tinted; arguments, rejection, betrayal and infidelity all play on the flip side of a ‘million love songs’. Those of you that exist in despair are allowed on this day to bathe in the sorrow of a love lost, you are able to shed rivers of tears in an ocean of eternal loneliness. Hoping against all odds for your own customised Hollywood ending that so perpetually promotes the ‘Happy Ever After’ ideal!

Those of you that have miraculously managed to maintain a marriage or relationship would be wise to ignore such trappings, an occasional unexpected gesture throughout the year will help cement a true love. No need for you to buckle under the pressure of the tidal wave of red roses and heart shaped confectionary.

Whatever you do on this ridiculous day I hope that you are able to see through the propaganda and enjoy your own unique version of love.

DISCLAIMER

All images on this blog have been sourced on the web, if you feel affronted by this exploitation then please e-mail: mscocolaverne@hotmail.com and the image will be removed immediately. Thank you for visiting, Ms Coco LaVerne